


Call It a Homebrew

by roswyrm



Series: magic a la hour of the bees [1]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Babies, Alternate Universe - Human, Gen, Major Character Undeath, child endangerment, not literally i just think its too funny of a tag not to use, you ever think about mollymauks backstory and cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 07:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19988488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roswyrm/pseuds/roswyrm
Summary: Five years ago, a woman with no memories crawled out of her own grave.Or, a prologue of sorts.





	Call It a Homebrew

**Author's Note:**

> listen sometimes you think about critical role and need to shove the most tragic backstories at your fav characters, but in a modern setting, because you've decided that High Fantasy is boring and too close to canon. anyway. Working Title: _we both know this is gonna get abandoned in half an hour but here we are_

Aleksandra Rackett is dead, dead, dead, vanished out into the dark of London at midnight. Aleksandra Rackett is dead, dead, dead, because what else could she be after taking a two a.m. train somewhere, anywhere, everywhere that wasn’t where her family had their bloodied hands? Aleksandra Rackett is dead, dead, dead, and the only person who might miss her is long since dead himself.

The drik Acht Amsterdam family is dead, dead, dead, drowned in a hurricane that came on too quickly. The drik Acht Amsterdam family is dead, dead, dead, because what else could they be after laying there, face down in the water, for hours on hours on hours on end? The drik Acht Amsterdam family is dead, dead, dead, and their deaths are chalked up as a tragedy that makes it into a tiny section of the local newspaper, and then no one ever thinks about it again.

See, this is where the story ends.  
See, this is where any story would end.  
See, see, see, this is where the good bits _begin._

When she is seventeen years old, a shadow wakes up screaming, and she claws her way out of the black box she finds herself in, dirt choking her, earth packed painfully underneath her short fingernails as she scrabbles desperately for air. When he is ten years old, a sliver of moonlight is still dodging child protective services, and he cycles out past the endless outskirts of town with his belongings in a dirty green backpack, wind burning his face, sun beating painfully into his young skin as he pedals desperately for freedom.

And the shadow sees something like a horseman on the horizon, an extant form of decay personified, sun-dark skin smudged with sunless-black soil, and he is fast approaching her. And the moonlight sees something like a monster at his feet, a re-awakened corpse tearing at the earth, lamplight-pale skin coated with drought-beige dirt, and she is panting from her place halfway stuck inside the ground.

Grizzop (drik Acht Amsterdam, really, but he’ll never say that out loud; something like a fear that if he gives that part of himself to the world, he’ll never get it back) holds out a hand. The corpse (Aleksandra Rackett, technically, but she left that a million miles away, not to mention she doesn’t remember) takes it, draws herself out of her own grave, and then collapses, heaving, upon the dry earth. “Wotcher,” says the kid, plopping down beside her and pulling his water bottle out of his bag, “are you a zombie?”

The corpse blinks up at him. Her voice doesn’t come out, and Grizzop passes her a capful of filtered (if warm) water. She swishes it around in her mouth, clearing the dirt and death-stale air from it, tasting for poisons, and then spits it out onto the ground again. Grizzop scoots back with a small noise of disgust. His water bottle is suddenly in the corpse’s hand, which he figures is as good as infected with the zombie-disease now, not to mention any corpse-eating bacteria, so he resigns himself to getting another one before the shops inevitably close down to the zombie apocalypse he’s watching begin. The girl takes a long, long drink. “No,” she rasps, finally, “‘m not a zombie.”

The kid points to the disturbed earth behind her. “You just crawled out of a grave.”

The slightly-older kid shrugs. “Don’t remember dying.”

“I mean, most people don’t,” Grizzop mutters. It’s true, but most people don’t get back up after dying, so the not-zombie thinks it doesn’t count even a little bit. With typical ten-year-old logic, Grizzop cocks his small head and asks, “D’you wanna eat me?”

The shadow looks at him. The moonlight looks back. With typical seventeen-year-old bluntness, she squints at him and enunciates, _“No.”_ She says it like she’s thinking ‘dear gods why me’ or maybe ‘this is why I don’t like kids’ or possibly ‘obviously I don’t want to eat you, you weird little man’ or, most likely, a combination of the three.

Grizzop gets to his feet, refuses to take his water bottle back (corpse-eating bacteria is still an issue, probably, and he doesn’t want to waterfall if he can help it) and holds out a hand. “Right.” He sticks the same dust-covered hand out to her. “Wanna run away with me?”

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr @roswyrm as per usual, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated!!


End file.
